It was a dark and stormy afternoon, or was it early morning? It was impossible to tell as today was a magical day...the day of the Summer Solstice, the day that the sun stands still and time is held in suspended animation. A day where magic can happen. This was the one day that Jools knew if she was lucky and searched hard enough, the long lost and forgotten Tiddly Cove and its treasures might finally be revealed to her.
The rain forest trail ahead of her exhaled great plumes of mist from its trees like a dragon sitting fat and happy in its lair. The mist ascended across the branches and emerged from the forest, hovering eerily at the edge as if lying in wait for it’s next victim. Jools wasn’t long into her run, about 20 minutes or so, but she knew the journey would be full of perils that only mystic and magic can bring. But she had on her trusty baseball cap and had strapped on her iPhone, because it was time to save the world!
Little by little the cloud of mist took on a dark color. It throbbed and hummed and carried the smell of bark and earth. But the smell couldn’t mask the stench of impending doom which was lurking just out of sight. Behind a berm on the edge of the trail, Jools saw the danger too late. As she ran by, the deadly nightshade plant growing in the gloom let out a puff of putrid fumes and Jools sank to the soggy, peaty ground in a toxic stupor; her mind swimming with visions of magic spells, witches and medicine men.
Some time later Jools awoke in the dark as if from a dream. She wondered out loud how she had survived. And as she struggled to sit up, the answer came to her. Her baseball cap had fallen down over her face when she fell to the ground. Not only did this extraordinary cap have an SPF of 50, but now it had saved her from the toxic fumes of the deadly nightshade plant by mimicking a gas mask. She was alive! And alive enough to feel something chewing on her foot. She sat up and watched in horror as a giant black slug chomped greedily on her new organic runners.
“Strewth! I am Juniper Jools! A woodland specialist, not a woodland slug dish! “ She exclaimed out loud with some impatience. She quickly sprang to her feet, tacky with slug slime, and sped away into the dissolving mist. It was time to get this show on the road.
Jools ran for a while and found herself free of the misty trail and running down a narrow road which snaked its way towards blue sky and the beach. Her running shoes were still a little tacky from the slug slime, but she jogged effortlessly downward. She heard a flutter and from the corner of her eye, she saw a single crow settle on a nearby tree. A little further down the road she again heard a flutter, but the single crow had multiplied and was now three. As she neared the bottom of the road, the three crows became five and instinctively Jools knew she wasn’t exactly out of the woods yet, so to speak. She picked up her running pace as the crows gathered menacingly on a telephone wire, cawing loudly. The single crow had now become a “murder” and Jools was the object of their wrath.
The nearer she got to the beach, the louder they cawed. As Jools approached the birds, one of the crows deliberately and abruptly swept down from the wire and viciously pecked her on the back of her hat. The crow was quickly followed by the rest and she was soon engulfed by the whooshing and flapping of crows intent on pecking her to death. She tried to outrun the mass of swirling birds, but it was no use, they were all around her. She tried to beat at the birds in flight, but was outnumbered and the flapping and cawing intensified. She quickly stopped, dropped and rolled into a protective position and with her left hand protecting her head, she used her right hand to intuitively pull out her trusty iPhone which was strapped safely in her pocket. She knew she had the perfect “scarecrow” in her iTunes library. Working quickly, she tapped on Celine Dion and let her rip full blast in the direction of the crows. The shrieking strains of “All By Myself” was more than enough for the terrified crows to take to the air and swoop off towards the beach.
Jools quickly headed in another direction, towards the base of a steep hill. She was no stranger to running hills, but this one was as steep as the side of a tall building. After about 10 minutes her heart was beating its way right out of her chest and the sweat poured off her like shower water, but she was almost at the top. Her legs felt like jelly and she was thinking about slowing her pace when all of a sudden, the road began to move backwards. Now she was running, but not going anywhere. The faster she ran, the faster the road flung her backwards. What trickery of nature was this? She had somehow found her way onto the treadmill to hell.
From the corner of the her eye she thought she saw an escape route and took it. Jool’s sprang lightning-fast sideways through a small gap in the thick vegetation lining the roadway and found herself lying on a dark and narrow trail entrance which had been invaded by laurel, blackberry and ivy. She pulled herself to her feet and brushed herself off. It had been another daring escape and she felt breathless and a bit woozy. She wearily pressed onwards along a winding path which led out into a beautiful forested glen. She realized she had entered the majestic Valley of the Giants, a legendary stand of old growth Douglas-firs, cedars and hemlocks. Jools knew that in the woods the trees could talk and she felt the magic heavy in the air. She was also weary and even though the woods here were very dark, she rested for a while on a rotting nurse log.
She tried to shake off the sleepiness which was attempting to envelop her when she thought she saw something move in the dark in front of her. She needed to get a better look so pulled out her iPhone and tapped on her handy flashlight “app”. As the torch lit up the darkness, the ground in front of her began to move. Jools gasped wide-eyed at an incredible huge mass of spiders swarming on the ground; giant hairy spiders, creeping along the ground, moving slowly towards her.
“Spiders! Why’d it have to be spiders?” Jools shrieked.
To be or not to be was not the question. She really didn’t want to “be” right now. She backed up slowly and silently cried for help. Of all of her many fears, this was by far the worst. She continued to back up slowly, fending off the advancing spiders with a long stick. Before long she found herself back to back with a bold rounded hillock of bare granite. She clambered up it and watched with despair as the spiders too began to climb. The other side of the hillock revealed nothing but a swirling mass of mist below her. Then miraculously she heard a whisper on the air, a response to her earlier cries.
But wait, she thought, what exactly is it telling me? It sounded for all the world like “hump”? Or maybe “thump”? Or ”dump”? Puzzled, Jools strained to hear the murmur over the drone of the spiders now in full pursuit of her. As the spiders reached the top of the hillock, Jools got it!
“You can’t be serious trees? You really want me to “jump” into that swirling mass of air?”
“Yesssss” she heard, as plain as day.
So Jools jumped and her short life flashed quickly before her eyes. And after that it seemed like a week, then an eternity, then an eon had passed before “sploosh”! She landed in the water. She sank deep, ten or twelve feet, and stopped, then started to float upward. The tide, apparently, was in. As soon as she broke the surface and got a breath, she yelled a wordless cry of victory. She was in Starboat Cove, a small basin of water off Atkinson Point. But the sea was roiling, wind and rain lashing into it. She began swimming in the froth, aiming for the shore that didn’t seem that far away. But the sea had other plans for her, and she felt herself dragged further and further out by an unknown force.
Jools was pulled out of the small cove and round a rocky bluff into a smaller, deeper bay. The cove was sunny and bright and littered with logs. She was in Caulfeild Cove. The current carried her up to the beach and tossed her gently ashore along with a handful of purple starfish, colorful sea anemones and hermit crabs. Jools lay still for a moment and tried to catch her breath. The cove was more of a rocky outcrop than a beach, but just beyond the rock and sand was an area ablaze with brilliant color. It was home to a diverse array of wildflowers in full bloom such as sea blush, camas, and cluster-lilies. And all around her was the buzz of pollinators at work. It was then that Jools realized that she had found the lost cove and the hidden treasures were the beauty, fragility and biodiversity of this precious natural environment. None of this could be seen from the road or trail high above, an area that had, over time, become invaded with alien species. The cove had been renamed many years before and now only a handful of old timers know it by its former name "Tiddly" and know of the treasures it holds.
It was the best of times and the worst of times. Jools was elated at her discovery of the lost Tiddly Cove, but she wasn’t home safe yet and magic still filled the air. She set off running with a new found energy and headed for home. It wasn’t too long before her home came into view in the distance and she let out a sigh of relief which might have been a tad too soon. It was then she noticed a large clump of giant Japanese knotweed on the side of the trail and before she had time to think, it was too late. She felt something thick and woody entwine around her left ankle and instantly she was flat on her back as the knotweed dragged her fully into its impenetrable thicket. She looked up in horror as the giant knotweed stems writhed like the serpents on Medusa’s head and she could feel herself losing consciousness.
Then out of nowhere she heard a voice. “Jools? Why are you lying on the ground?”
Jools recognized the voice immediately, it was Gene, her neighbor, and by some great miracle of nature, the sound of his voice had broken the evil magic of the giant knotweed and it was once again just a large and overgrown weed on the side of the trail.
“Hi Gene, I’m okay, I just lost my footing that’s all.”
But she was more than okay, she was Juniper Jools and she would live to run another day!
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